PHACTORY is a unique pan-European consortium operating as a one-stop-shop virtual factory for photonics innovation support of European industry. PHACTORY brings together over 30 partners representing Europe’s top competence centers in photonics. Together the PHACTORY partners offer open streamlined access to the full spectrum of photonics technologies, expertise and supply chain activities from TRL2-7 including pilot lines and PIC foundries, combined with specialist partners in business, investment, intellectual property, and EU manufacturing support services to maximize the commercial impact from the project. PHACTORY’s ambitious work plan builds on the proven track record of over 20 years of successful collaboration between the consortium partners in previous similar EU projects and aims to go well beyond the current state-of-the-art in terms of its impact. PHACTORY will reach out broadly to European industry, especially SMEs, start-ups, and scaling companies, predominantly as first users and early adopters, to generate a critical mass of 125 carefully selected support cases with the highest potential for commercial impact. PHACTORY will work closely with the selected support cases, providing deep technology support interventions for TRL acceleration through intensive cross-border collaborative innovation projects, combined with tailored business supports to accelerate the investment readiness levels (IRL) of the supported companies. As a result, PHACTORY expects to achieve a quantified impact of at least 1250 new EU jobs, 937M€ in new company revenues, and 190M€ in new venture capital on aggregate within the supported companies directly related to the delivered PHACTORY innovation supports. The PHACTORY project will simultaneously strengthen the European photonics innovation ecosystem with more complete and mature value chains linked to EU manufacturing which are integrated into the PhotonHub Association for sustainability of the innovation support services.

The PASSION project will develop new photonic technologies for supporting agile metro networks, enabling capacities of Tb/s per channel, 100 Tb/s per link and Pb/s per node over increased transport distances. A new metro network infrastructure is envisioned, fitting the network operator roadmap and targeting at least a tenfold reduction in components energy consumption and footprint. These breakthroughs are achieved by developing all the essential photonic building blocks. On the transmitter side a novel 3D stacked modular design will be developed combining a silicon photonics (SiPh) circuit layer with directly modulated high-bandwidth 1550nm VCSELs light sources. At the receiver side we will develop novel InP based coherent receiver arrays which handle polarization on chip making polarization handling off chip unnecessary. Finally, we will develop a compact and cost-effective switching concept which can support the Pb/s capacities generated by the transceiver modules, using a combination of InP and SiPh PICs. Increased system flexibility and modularity is obtained by sliceable bandwidth/bitrate variable transceivers. The resulting solution will offer scalability, programmability and re-configurability using agile aggregation in spectrum, polarization and space dimensions. PASSION will contribute to reinforce European industrial technological leadership in high-capacity photonic devices and sub-systems, addressing the growing market of metro network scenarios, improving business opportunities in Europe. The PASSION consortium includes universities, research centres, device manufacturers, a supplier of communication equipment and a network operator addressing the entire value chain. The strong industrial commitment is demonstrated through the presence of two large enterprises and four SMEs, which will identify the path to industrial exploitation, standardization and commercialization, while universities and research centres will support the scientific dissemination.

Digitizing European industry is essential for European competitivity in the 21st century, but only 1/5 of EU SMEs is highly digitised. Laser Based Advanced and Additive Manufacturing (LBAAM) technologies are regarded as Key Enablers for Digital Production and offer important advantages to the adopters. SMEs have strong entry barriers for the technology: Investment cost, technology complexity, system integration and awareness/adoption readiness. PULSATE aims to lower all said barriers to boost the adoption of Laser Based technologies by SMEs and promote the development of SME-friendly laser based equipment and solutions. PULSATE will establish a Pan-European Network to stimulate SMEs to take part in Innovation Ecosystem of LBAAM, by connecting Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) to a support structure of knowledge, infrastructure and services, designed to tackle the issues currently limiting the adoption of LBAAM technology. A balanced combination is proposed between wide outreach using interconnected Virtual Communities and ICT tools (a Single Entry Point will connect a wide range of networking and servicing tools), and close exchange and interaction via DIHs. The project relies on a consortium of 6 competence centres (AIMEN, FTMC, MTC, SINTEF, Fraunhofer, CEA), service community and marketplace providers (FBA, CLESGO) and a photonics industry association (EPIC). With >50 previous projects outcomes, existing tools and services, connections with 74 running DIHs, Clusters and regional initiatives, PULSATE counts with the explicit support of companies and institutions (>80LoS), and an independent Board of Stakeholders gathering key players in LBAAM will ensure the quality and pertinence of PULSATE orientation. PULSATE will operate under 4 action areas: Business, Technology, Competence & Awareness, addressing the following technology domains: Nano/Micro Fabrication, AM, High Power Laser Manufacturing and Digitisation, and implementing 4 Open Calls and a catalogue of services.

PULSe's objective is to optimize, industrialize and create the conditions for a market exploitation of the first cost -effective Brillouin distributed sensing solution based on a synergy of innovations on interrogator equipment, strain sensing cable and open-access application support tools.

Current industrial markets demand highly value added products offering new features at a low-cost. Bio-inspired surface structures, containing features in the nanometer/micrometer scales, offer significant commercial potential for the creation of functionalized surfaces. In this aim technologies to modify surfaces instead of creating composites or spreading coatings on surfaces can offer new industrial opportunities. In particular, laser surface texturing, has shown to be capable to obtain advanced functionalities, especially when sources operating at pulse durations of nanosecond (short) and picosecond and femtosecond (ultra short) are used. LAMPAS will significantly increase the potential of laser structuring for the design of newly functionalized surfaces by enhancing the efficiency, flexibility and productivity (over 1 m²/min) of the process based on the development of a high power ultra-short laser system as well as strategies and concepts for beam delivery. This will be performed by combining the outstanding characteristics of two laser technologies, being Direct Laser Interference Patterning and Polygon Scanner processing. The expected results to be obtained in this project will provide the European industry with a cost effective and robust technology, capable of producing a broad range of functional surfaces on large areas at outstanding throughputs, bringing Europe a chance to lead in this key area of surface treatment. LAMPAS consortium covers the full value chain for laser surface texturing and has access to demanding markets. In addition, an in-line surface characterisation to enable rapid feedback about the target topography as well as to control surface temperature during the laser process will be included.